Utilizing Ostrom's institutional analysis and development framework toward an understanding of crisis-driven policy

This paper examines the institutional dynamics of policymaking in a crisis. Crises have been termed a perceptual category, events that at least seem to be threatening to society economically or physically orboth. A crisis often calls forth public policy responses, but the events themselves are often clouded by uncertainty and ambiguity. Still, policymakers, especially if the perception persists, believe that they must do something in a crisis even when the crisis would likely be ended by market or other social forces. Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework is utilized as a means of organizing and describing the key variables of crises and the policymaking that ensues from it. This is shown using the example of legislative policymaking during the 2007 US energy crisis.